The Bronx crash is the same one reported yesterday. Wouldn’t want you guys to inflate the numbers of cars leaving the roadway in NYC. There have only been four I’ve come across in the month of July. Clearly nothing to worry about.

@ddartley:disqus yep, sure looks like the NYPD has been working hard at keeping us all safe.

Daphna

I am disturbed by Daniel Garodnick’s and Jimmy Van Bramer’s proposed legislation. In the AMNY article, the only person quoted was someone who “nearly got clipped” by a delivery man. Garodnick and Van Bramer should be looking at the statistics of who kills and injures, and not at anecdotal stories of people who perceive that they were “nearly” hit. These near misses that people perceive were probably not a near miss at all: the rider was probably in full control and knew he could pass without incident. Anyone riding any type of bicycle is very vulnerable and has to take care (and does take care) because any collision with a pedestrian would likely hurt the rider far more. Bicycle riders are not a menace. They can not inflict harm and remain unhurt like a car driver. People should be calling and making complaints about the dangerous driving they witness but instead they complain about the danger that they misperceive from e-bikes. Then unfortunately elected officials pander to these complainers.

Federal law states that an e-bike can not be treated differently from a regular bicycle. As I understand, legislation is pending in New York State to bring state law in line with the federal law on e-bikes. City laws against e-bikes are already illegal because they violate federal law, but once the state passes a law that is in line with the federal law, then I hope the city council will have to rescind its laws against e-bikes that treat them differently than regular bikes.

More bikes on the streets, even e-bikes, make the streets safer for everyone. Pedestrians should be happy to see more bike riders on any type of bike.

Station44025

E-bikes are the clean, quite, hybrids of the future in a post-carbon world. Also, they can be a great asset for seniors to stay active and mobile with a little boost up the hills.

Just like opposing bike lanes, killing viable and economical solutions to our environmental and health problems like e-bikes is counter productive. Daphna is right: if we’re going to use actual evidence rather than anecdote to drive policy, cars should be the real target.

Joe R.

I’ve never understood the opposition to e-bikes. E-bikes are the perfect vehicle for cities-small, clean, fast, very inexpensive to operate. They should be pushed as the replacement for cars instead of being villainized. The question we should ask is which would you rather have tooling around the city- e-bikes weighing perhaps 300 pounds with rider and going at most 20 mph, or multi-ton motor vehicles capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 100 mph? If you ask me cars belong on highways while e-bikes are perfectly suited to city streets. Moreover, they open up cycling to those for whom it presents a physical challenge. This greatly increases the demographic which can make use of bike lanes, which in turn means much less opposition to bike lanes on the grounds that “they’re only useful to somebody else, not me”.

Anonymous

@88b32fb69e499718d95067da9d3d7b03:disqus

Federal law states that an e-bike can not be treated differently from a regular bicycle

When will people stop rehearsing this, at best, highly misleading claim? The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that they have to be treated the same–that is, e-bikes and real bikes have to be treated the same . . . for the things that that agency controls.
That agency does not, in fact, control what cities and states have to allow on their roads.
As this article:http://bikeportland.org/2010/08/26/e-bikes-the-law-and-you-38493
from BikePortland puts it:

Since this is a CPSC ruling, it only defines what safety requirements
are required to sell an electric bicycle; it in no way legislates their
usage. . . . In short, at the federal level there are some restrictions defining
e-bikes for the purposes of sales, but the decision to allow e-bikes is
specifically delegated to the state or local level.

I have no problem with *low-power* e-bikes in the abstract, but in the real-world of day-to-day bike riding in New York, they’re the bikes I’m most likely to see speeding down sidewalks and most of them are noisy and not at all low-power. Hence the hatred they inspire.

Joe R.

@dporpentine:disqus If they’re noisy then they’re most likely not e-bikes, but gas-powered scooters (which should be banned, along with gas-powered lawn tools). Also, how e-bikes are driven is a completely separate issue from whether or not they should be allowed. Most are currently driven by delivery people with a financial incentive to cut corners. We can easily deal with that problem by any combination of requiring restaurants to pay delivery people by the hour, forbidding tipping, making owners responsible for fines, or even outright banning of food deliveries altogether.

Anonymous

@2555783a6f62598b6aadd2d882a4830f:disqus You’re certainly right that what I see most often aren’t low-power e-bikes.

CheapSkate

My 22 pound terrier and I were nearly hit yesterday morning at the corner of Bleecker & Macdougal as we started across the intersection with the green light. Some ebike delivery guy salmoning in the bike lane apparently was too busy to sound a warning or pause for either the red light or moving traffic. Had it been a gasoline powered scooter or moped I might have, at least, heard it coming. Personally I’m glad to see Garidnick makes a distinction between ebikes and human powered bikes since the former are illegal Curbing wreckless riding by ebike riders should make city streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists alike.

http://twitter.com/gecko39 fj

Climate change affects everything — including transportation — and politicians beware when they think they can cherry-pick reality.